Well, hello everyone and welcome back. This is our daily devotional for Friday, January 17th, 2025. And I'm delighted to be with you this day. Now it's Friday y'all, or I mean, that's when this is airing. I don't know what day it is when you see this, but it's Friday. That means that you got 48 hours. or so, if you're watching this at 6 a.m., which by the way, I think this is Daily Devotional 667. Yesterday was 666 and your computer didn't explode or anything like that. But the reason I mention that is because you got 48 hours to plan for the Lord's Day Sunday morning. In fact, if it's at six, you got, what does that make it? 52 hours to get ready for the Lord's Day. You can come and worship with us here. And the reason I mentioned that is, We continue with the book of Revelation. That's right. And we're going to talk about why the fact that 666 daily devotionals doesn't mean your computer will explode. We'll talk about the fact that the chuck roast that I bought was $16.66 and I'm going to eat it tonight. And well, Hopefully I don't have heartburn. How do you like that? Yeah, no, I don't mean to make fun of this sort of thing, but y'all, one of the things that we're doing as we go through Revelation is we are seeing that Revelation was given for the purpose of hope and readiness, okay? It's not given to discourage us, it's given to encourage us. And we're finished in chapter one with Revelation, this coming Lord's Day morning. If you don't have a Bible-believing church and you're local to our area, we would love to have you. Okay, so come on out 10 a.m. Don't get here at 10. You're going to have to sit close to the front. God has blessed us. We've got a wonderful problem in that we start running out of room. So, you know, get here a little bit before 10 o'clock, but absolutely love to have you this coming Lord's Day morning. If you're not in our area, get yourself in a Bible-believing church, okay? It's very, very important. So, keep those things in mind. Now, what are we doing? We're making our way through Genesis chapter 24. We've seen some very interesting stuff with Eleazar, Abraham's servant, going to find a wife for Isaac, his one and only son. We see that he does make his way back to Abraham's people, to his clan. He finds this woman, Rebekah, right? Goes, gets water for the camels. Now what we dealt with yesterday is that he's dealing with Laban, that tricky brother-in-law, or not brother-in-law, but that tricky brother of Rebecca, soon-to-be brother-in-law of Isaac. And I alluded to this yesterday, but this is kind of foreshadowing, right, that literary term is foreshadowing of events to come. Because we know that pretty soon it's not going to be Isaac that is dealing with his brother-in-law, it's going to be Jacob dealing with his uncle. And if you think that Laban seems a little tricky now, you know, like Laban's the one that shows up and says, I prepared all this place for the camels. Come on back." He hadn't done squat, right? If you think that Laban is tricky now, you just wait. This is like a warning, okay? But even in the midst of this, we see beauty, we see something glorious, we see a reminder of what Marriage is supposed to be, and even more than that, that marriage is used as a metaphor to describe Christ and His relationship with His people. I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll get there. But as we start, in just a moment, we're going to see Laban being tricky. Let's pray, and then we'll dig in. Father, please be with us now as we come to Your Word. Help us to understand it. Help us to process it well. As we come to the end of this story, this beautiful ending, Father, we pray that we would look at our own situations in life, our relationships with people, that we would ultimately look to Christ and His love for us. But we're not gonna do this on our own. We need your Holy Spirit, so please guide us now. And we pray it all in Christ's name, amen. All right, so Genesis chapter 25, where we left off was with the response to Eleazar. If you recall yesterday, much of what we read was Eleazar recounting to Bethuel and Laban all the events that had taken place. Everything from Abraham making the oath, right, to the fact that he was praying and Rebekah came out, watered his camels, all of those different things. Also, we talked yesterday about how When it comes time to do the Lord's business, you do the Lord's business. You know, business first, right? And where we ended yesterday was with their response. And this is Genesis 24, verse 50. Laban and Bethuel answered, this is from Jehovah. We can say nothing to you one way or the other. Here is Rebecca. Take her and go and let her become the wife of your master's son as the Lord or as Jehovah has directed." And then after that, you see that Eleazar rejoices. He praises God. He shows us the proper response to God answering prayer. And then where we left things was verse 54. Then he and the men who were with him ate and drank and spent the night there. When they got up the next morning, he said, send me on my way to my master. Where we pick up today is verse 55. But, now think about, think about where they had left things. Verse 50, Laban and Bethuel answered, this is from Jehovah. We can say nothing to you one way or the other. Here's Rebecca, take her and go. Let her become the wife, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Verse 55, but her brother and her mother replied. This is after he said, send me on my way. Her brother and her mother replied, let the girl remain with us 10 days or so. Then you may go." Y'all, realize this. When you and I hear 10 days or so, we think 10 days or so. When Eliezer would have heard 10 days or so, you know what would have come to his mind? What would have come to his mind is, oh, I see. Is it time to do more bargaining? Because remember what happened? We read about it yesterday, right? After he told them everything that had taken place, verse 52, when Abraham's servant heard what they had said, he bowed down to the ground before Jehovah. Then the servant brought out gold and silver jewelry and articles of clothing and gave them to Rebekah. He also gave them costly gifts to her brothers, to her mother, and so forth. What Laban would have heard is, oh, I see, 10 days or so. Is it time to bargain again? What's going on here? But you'll notice what Eleazar did, what the servant did. Verse 56, but he said to them, do not detain me now that Jehovah has granted success to my journey. Send me on my way so I may go to my master. Then they said, let's call the girl and ask her about it. So they called Rebecca and asked her, will you go with this man? Now, y'all, again, this on the surface level is like, yeah, that makes sense. After all, he shows up, asks for water, and then he's like, all right, great, fantastic. It's time for me to hit the road. On the surface level, we would read this with our Western mindset and say, yeah, what about her? Ask her if she wants to go, or, yeah, I mean, he just showed up and then he expects her to leave with him and go all the way over to a different place, leave the land of her people, go get married to some joker she doesn't even know? Of course it makes sense that they would ask the girl, but y'all, again, remember the riddle of Saladin, right? It's all about the flourish. It's all about the subtlety. It's all about the slightness. It's all about working the deal, you see. I remember talking to some of our missionaries in this part of the world, and yeah, I love, I've never been to that particular area of the world, but Morocco, really Southern Spain, when you start dealing with that Eastern mindset there, Oh, it's different, and I love it. Oh, I love it. And I remember talking to some of our missionaries about that, about how the mindset, man, it's just so different. And they're like, yeah, it's really wonderful until you need a plumber. And I was like, what are you talking about? Well, until you say, yeah, how much is this going to cost me and what time are you going to be here to get it fixed? In this area of the world, realize that shrewdness is valued above all other things. How shrewd you are shows the mettle of a man. And so we can't just read this with a Western mindset where we say, yeah, why wouldn't they ask Rebecca if she wants to go? And yeah, why wouldn't they give her 10 days or so. It's not the 10 days that's the problem. You see, it's the or so that's the problem. But the Lord intervenes. Why do I say that? Well, Keep on going, verse 55, I'll read it again. But her brother and her mother replied, let the girl remain with us 10 days or so, then you may go. But he said to them, do not detain me now that Jehovah has granted me success to my journey. Send me on my way that I may go to my master. Then they said, let's call the girl and ask her about it. So they called Rebecca and asked her, will you go with this man? I will go, she said. Y'all, the other side of this that we don't need to overlook, the idea of them asking her if she wanted to go get married, huh? That's not what was going on here. Again, y'all, that is a modern Western concept. That's not how marriage worked. It was a legal contract, okay? That's why Eliezer didn't ask her. That's why he went to Bethuel and then Laban butts in. That's just how this stuff worked. But nevertheless, the Lord intervened, verse 59, so they sent their sister Rebekah on her way along with her nurse and Abraham's servant and his men, and they blessed Rebekah and said to her, our sister, may you increase to thousands upon thousands, may your offspring possess the gates of their enemies. Now y'all, Again, is this because they love her? I'm not gonna be so pessimistic as to say that this isn't part of it, but the idea of the women being blessed, that's just not how society worked. It's just not. Again, there's some tricky stuff going on. Basically what Laban is saying is, hey, yeah, I hope that you go off and you get some really good stuff. And don't forget about your brother over here. Don't forget about your poor brother. You ever had poor mouth people in your life? People that poor mouth everything. They're like, oh, yeah, I don't even know how we're going to be able to make it. And then they go and they do something that cost a ton of money. That's kind of what you got going on with Laban here. But again, God intervened. Verse 61, then Rebekah and her maids got ready and mounted their camels and went back with the man. So the servant took Rebekah and left. Now y'all, that's the end of her saga with her family. But then what we see is beautiful. Now, Isaac had come from Beerlehairoi, for he was living on the Negev. He went out to the field one evening to meditate. That tells us something about Isaac. He's a man of God, right? To dwell on the Lord, that's what that term is used in the connotation of. And as he looked up, he saw camels approaching. Rebekah also looked up and saw Isaac. She got down from her camel and asked the servant, who is that man in the field coming to meet us? He is my master, the servant answered her. So she took her veil and covered herself. Then the servant told Isaac all he had done. Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother, Sarah, and he married Rebecca. So she became his wife and he loved her. And Isaac was comforted after his mother's death. Y'all, again, we gotta be careful. We can't read the Bible in light of Shakespeare. However, Pretty close, isn't it? They're coming across the field. Isaac is there to meditate. And he looks up and he sees this woman who is exceedingly beautiful. And she asks, who is that? And then it's revealed, well, that's my master. Takes her into his mother's tent, marries her, and he's comforted by her. Y'all, what this is a picture of is real love. Not the Shakespeare stuff, Love at First Sight, Romeo and Juliet, which is a story about teenagers that fall in love and commit suicide and death and mayhem. No, I don't really believe that. I'm a romantic at heart. What can I say? But, nevertheless, this is real love. This harkens back to something. It harkens back to when God gave Adam Eve. Genesis chapter two, verse 22. Then the Lord God had made woman from the rib he had taken out of the man and he brought him to the man. The man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman for she was taken out of man. And then we receive the commentary. For this reason, the man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh. What do we have here? You have not, obviously Isaac doesn't fall into a deep sleep and then God removes a rib and then he fashions Rebecca, but what you do have is Isaac taking her to be his own. And it's not just that, he's comforted after the death of his mother. He leaves his father and mother and he cleaves unto his wife. What a beautiful picture this is and no, Not of romance. No, not of just what marriage is. What a beautiful picture this is of what love is. That love gives freely. That love sometimes takes. That love has no prerequisites and requirements. That love is free and beautiful. This is a picture. No, not just marriage, this is a picture of something so much deeper, so much otherly that defies things like that. It points to the love of Jesus Christ, ultimately. The fact that Christ takes the church to be his own, the church that is prepared, the church that, I know that Eleazar didn't purchase, but at the same time, the church that is prepared. That's what Jesus does with us, my friends. Just as it is with this having a happy ending, so it is a happy ending when you place your faith in Jesus Christ. Will you trust in him? I keep asking you that question, but will you look to him? Will you rely on him? Will you take heart in the fact that God gave Eliezer success? Will you take heart in the fact that now Isaac has a wife and thus God remains true to his covenant with Abraham? I hope so. Abraham certainly did. That's why he put so much stock in store in this. And as we know from chapter 25, very soon hereafter, Abraham will pass. He will die. But he will die in the full assurance that God is good to his word. Such is the case with you. God always provides. God always sees the way forward. So keep these things in mind. Let's pray. Our God and our Father, we thank you for this time that you have given to us, and we pray that you would make your word real in our hearts and minds, not just information, but let us be moved by it, let us be inspired by it, let us see your love on display, and in turn, let us love one another. We pray it all in Christ's name, amen. This ends the saga of Isaac finding Rebecca, or Rebecca finding Isaac, or maybe just Eliezer finding Rebecca, it doesn't really matter, but thus ends the story. I hope that you're encouraged by these things. Now, again, it's Friday. Make plans. Sunday will be here before you know it. Sunday morning is a Monday morning decision. We're way past that, but it is Friday morning. make a Sunday morning decision today. Until we meet again, Lord willing, I'll see you Sunday morning at 10, where we will live stream, and then again on Monday. I've heard that there may be some weather stuff coming. We'll have to see what happens. Y'all, I'm gonna be here. My good friend, Christopher Funk, left his Jeep behind, and yeah, I'm gonna make it here, unless it's absolute snowpocalypse, but it's a good Jeep, so I'm gonna be here. um but uh maybe a limited service but pay attention to that one call pay attention to facebook we'll let you know but take care in the meantime